


we lock arms and spin

by theultimateburrito



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon but slightly to the left, Multi, Repetition, Story within a Story, Vignette, cyclical time, universe hopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28231584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theultimateburrito/pseuds/theultimateburrito
Summary: The story goes on, as most stories do-- self-sustaining in tiny pockets of the world, in scraps and shreds and questions. Never in quite the same way, never with the same words, but across different pages, in different books, a shard is missing, a heart is wanting, a story is trying to will itself closed.But this story has been told before; naturally, it will be told again.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 24
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	we lock arms and spin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poppetawoppet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poppetawoppet/gifts).



The story goes on, as most stories do-- self-sustaining in tiny pockets of the world, in scraps and shreds and questions. Never in quite the same way, never with the same words, but across different pages, in different books, a shard is missing, a heart is wanting, a story is trying to will itself closed.

But this story has been told before; naturally, it will be told again,

and again,

and again. 

\--

A girl holds the hand of a boy she’s known all her life and tells him that she loves him. Such a simple thing to say, so simple. And with all his heart, his full and beating heart, he loves her too. Easy to take for granted here, where the grass is green and the air is warm. Where feelings can be spoken plainly and ravens are just birds that pass you by.

“I wonder all the time what my life would look like if I hadn’t met you.” The boy says.

Sprawled out on the grass, listening to the last cicadas hum, the girl murmurs, “That’s a silly thought.” 

The boy turns to her, and smiles, and lays a dandelion against her hand. “Maybe,” he says.

“Just maybe.”

\--

Fakir has leapt from the cockpit and clawed his way up the arm of Ahiru’s mech before he can register that he’s moved at all. One moment an explosion, the next-- he can’t find the footage between here and there. All he can see is the shattered glass of her cockpit as he clamors in beside her, makes room to accommodate the both of them where there is none. He’s careful not to crowd her, give her room to breathe.

He calls her name as he watches the labored rise and fall of her chest, hands hovering just short of her wounds. God, her-- It’s a wonder she’s still alive. That’s just like Ahiru, to hold on until the last shred of hope is gone. 

Maybe he’s light-headed because her face is all a blur when she weakly turns him. 

“Don’t cry, Fakir,” she tells him. 

He blinks and her face becomes clearer, for a moment. His eyes sting, his chest burns. 

“I’ll get you out,” Fakir says. “We’ll--” 

Ahiru places her hand on his. With the other, she slips her mech’s power core into Fakir’s palm, curling his fingers around it. It glows red through his fingers, pulsating, like a heartbeat.

“Take this to Mytho…” She looks into Fakir’s eyes, and it shatters his heart that she smiles until the last. “Please.” 

He stays with her until she’s gone, takes the core with him, and watches Ahiru fade into a speck of light among the stars behind him. 

\--

“I’ll free him,” The sparrow calls out, gripping the sword more tightly in his talons. Its weight is a comfort, makes it feel like less of a plaything. “Once and for all I will.” 

“Oh?” The raven king caws his laughter into the little bird’s face. “And where will he fly then, when you fling open the poor bird’s cage? Sit and cower for fear of the unknown? Or fly back to kneel before me, as you do now?”

The raven king towers over him, casting the glen entirely in shadow. “He is as much a servant to his fate as you are. Crawl back to your cage, little sparrow” 

The sparrow does not cower. “What’s the use of a sword if not to cut fate’s string?”

Nor does the raven. “What’s the use indeed?” 

And the two descend toward each other, a dizzying rush of feathers. 

\--

Mytho watches the seawater pool around his ankles and tries to remember what it feels like to swim. It should be easy to recall here, where land meets sea, but the breath of its foam doesn’t reach him. What must it taste like, the mist fanning against his lips? What must it feel like, to sink into its chill? The feeling was stolen from him just as his swan skin had been. Strewn about the world in pieces, far out of his reach. He can recall his body when it was draped in a coat of feathers as much as he can feel the ocean now. 

The particulars of it have been sanded away slowly over time. Perhaps that was one aspect of the curse. When it was taken, by who and how-- matters little when it’s gone. 

It grieves him to look down at the water so he looks up at the dot of boats along the horizon, their sails sparkling like waves along the sea. This too makes him ache, but it’s preferable to watch them. He and Fakir live in the cottage just up the hill, building those boats, stitching up their sails, and setting them out to sea, an ache in Mytho’s heart as he watches them glide along the water, far from where he can follow.

“Oh, there you are.” 

Mytho turns to face the voice. Fakir is standing behind him, gesturing for him to follow. “Come on, Charon wants to show you something.” 

Dutifully, Mytho follows along behind him, but not before glancing back at the sea.

“Fakir…”

Mytho’s voice is all but a whisper, but Fakir has had his ear trained to listen all his life. He turns to face Mytho, waits for him to speak. 

“Those boats. They’ve been repaired before?”

“Some of them, yes.” 

The cool air of the sea sweeps Mytho’s hair up and away. He watches the boats with their blinding white sails and wonders how many have had all of their planks torn out and put back together, if that makes them the same as they started, if someday he can know what it is to glide against the water with skin that's been put back together as they have.

“Is something the matter?” Fakir asks.

Mytho takes a deep breath. 

“Nothing,” Mytho says, quiet, before walking up the trail to the cottage. “Nevermind.”

Fakir watches him all the way,And he follows close after, hands in his pockets, thumbing at the small patch of white feathers within.

\--

“I love you,” Mytho tells her. And it feels so easy to say it back, so dangerously simple.

 _Don’t tell him_ , Ahiru thinks, as she opens her mouth. 

_Don’t_ , she tells herself, as she wonders if maybe somehow this time-- this time will be different. 

The words aren’t even halfway out of her mouth when Ahiru wakes up in her bed. The same day again, the same place-- again. 

She doesn’t need to turn around to know that the space beside her is empty, and she recognizes the irony in how _heavy_ that absence feels. It settles like a stone at the base of her throat, and she thinks that when the same daylight shines through the same blinds, that stone will be there again, waiting for her to push it back up.

\--

A raven dances all alone in a waste of powdered bone. She dances until she’s forgotten her raven blood, her loneliness, all her sadness-- and even longer after that still. Perhaps even now she still dances, though she can’t remember why she started. The memory has worn to powder.

\--

A thousand tables line the halls of the king beneath the mountain. On each one there are a thousand trinkets, baubles, and vases; hanging over them are a thousand tapestries inlaid with a thousand jewels. Ahiru pours over each item as if it were the first, careful in her assessment.

“Go forward, little duck,” The King had chuckled. “If you can discover which ornament I’ve turned your friend into-- then you may go together. Then and only then will I let him go.”

She holds a shining pearl necklace up to the light, wondering if she can see Mytho in the dazzle of each bead. No, not here. Ahiru picks up a vase and turns it over, wondering if she can see the shape of his face in each curve. No, not here either.

Above her, a chandelier of a dozen rubies cast a glittering red onto the ground below her, a gleam of anger, devotion, love, and regret in each scattered beam of light. And Ahiru moves on in her search. 

\--

Two girls glance at each other from across the hall. One clutches her violin case a little more tightly and they follow the sound of the class bell in opposite directions.

\--

This stretch of the house is so quiet, it’s as if the walls were holding their breath. Here, out of reach of the birds that loft in the rafters, here where the hall is warmest, Rue holds tight to the necklace at her chest and wishes for the ghost.

If the walls had been holding their breath, they exhale now as if breathing a sigh. From the wallpaper Rue’s ghost emerges, smiling enough to warm these drafty halls. And she smiles in return, a rare sight.

“Hello, Rue,” he whispers like the wind, taking her hand in his. 

“Hello, my prince,” she says in return. 

And she made him feel as such! So a prince he is, for what small window of time they have to speak like this-- for hours, if luck will have it. Her ghost speaks softly as the wind, but Rue has had her ear trained to listen all her life, and she could recognize it anywhere. Often, he speaks with great sadness, gazing forlorn into the ruby reflection of her necklace-- the one her father had given her. Today, however… Well, far be it for Rue to say, but she thinks that her ghost looks happy today. In his own sort of way, the kind that only they have developed the language for; one of promises and whispers in the quiet corners of this house.

“I wonder all the time what my life would look like if I hadn’t met you.” Her ghost whispers.

Rue laughs in spite of herself, “That’s a silly thought.” 

Though he cannot hold it, not really, he places his hand over hers. “Perhaps,” he replies.

“Perhaps,” she says.

\--

The story goes on, as most stories do. Never in quite the same way, never with the same words, but this story has been told before; naturally, it will be told again. 

So again it begins.

**Author's Note:**

> giftee asked for "weird au" so i give you all of them. i hope it brings you joy! title from tv on the radio's "repetition", inspired by my pal myrkks' fic "disjunt motion".


End file.
